I'm running a game where elves don't have souls. We've established, though, that they can take souls from the dead, and that this is a big deal for them culturally. My request would be what perks and responsibilities should come with being the only elf in town with a soul? And what sort of minor gameplay perks could this translate to?

Master Dogen is a streetwalking cheetah with a heart ƒull oƒ napalm:

A short list of things (d8 maybe) — good, bad, dangerous, or interesting — that can happen on the way from point A to point B.

Point A: The half-sunken remains of a great stone wall at the edge of the Great Swamp, on the edges of the civilized world, the protruding towers of which are inhabited by weary elves who stand guard, lighting campfires close up against the crumbled stone parapets at night....

Point B: The slowly, slowly swirling mud sinkholes at the center of the Great Swamp, beneath which are the stony remains of the huge colosseums, amphitheaters and vomitoria of the bygone Age of Marble.

Mathew Adams makes a sacraƒice oƒ himselƒ, to himselƒ:
"This is a randomly generated as you play dungeon thing, using the card game solitiara as the mechanic for the generating. I am busy with other stuff, so if other people wish to give it a crack and release it for free they are quite welcome to"

Monday, 23 March 2015

“…small thing that could upset balances and knock down a line of small dominoes and then big dominoes and then gigantic dominoes, all down the years across Time…” -Ray Bradbury

Things have...changed. Biological things. The effects of your actions have rippled out through time like a rumor through a crowd, and now lifeforms are starting to show it. Each day that passes, more flora and fauna begin to show signs that they are now longer what they were. Time’s flow over the course of eons has altered, added whole eras to their ancestry, and yet somehow the same individuals walk around now. It seems interesting at first but it can only get worse from here.Every day your Paradox Score goes up by one. Roll the nearest size die, rounding up (i.e. on the start of the fifth day, roll 1d6). The GM rolls on the local encounter table that many times. All the creatures that are “encountered” get a mutation (count repeated encounters as multiple mutations). Use whatever table you like, Scrap’s is interesting but more for players, I find this one sufficiently visible. Once a particular species has five or more, swap in another critter, or start on common humanoids. If the GM wishes to be more atmospheric, beginning the changes with more normal animals - horses, dogs, cattle - to set the tone that something is wrong.

If unaddressed, convert the game into Gamma World when the Paradox Score reaches thirty.

2> Object loop

“Eh, what’s the worst that can happen?” -Bender Rodriguez

You lost an item of some significance to you in your time shenanigan adventure and now it’s caught in an unstable time loop. Your family Goathammer that you use to shatter the serpentmen’s tesseract; the last arrow you fired at the Chronokhan to halt his ritual; the shirt button your grandfather ripped off you before you accidentally killed him on the way to first meet your grandmother - it seems to be haunting you, impossibly. And there are more of them.

Roll a d20. This is your Chaos Number. Every time you roll it on ANY die (bad luck if you roll a 2) you are reminded of what happened. Your Paradox Score starts at one, and each time you roll your Chaos Number it increases by one. Immediately that many copies of the object tumble out of some bizarre place nearby, often rather inconveniently. These copies can be used as normal - they are in every way the regular object, just at different times.

Anytime your Chaos Number comes up in a roll to use them, a wormhole sucks you, anyone else involved, and all the copies back to the moment which caused the paradox in the first place. Good luck explaining yourself (and your seventy one pairs of heirloom glasses) to yourself.

3> Other timelines.“Obviously, the time continuum has been disrupted creating this new temporal event sequence, resulting in this alternate reality.” -Dr. Emmet Brown

While you were mucking around with time, so was another you, in another time. That other you is a little different, maybe married someone else, or has a different job. And there was another you beyond that, but from a different country. And another, who looks like Bruce Willis. Somehow they’re here now. You have to kill them.

All encounter tables now have a 50% chance of running into an alterna-clone instead of whatever you would normally (check for clones before rolling on the table). Use Zac S’s time golem d100 table to generate the details for each encounter, but apply only to those PCs involved in the temporal antics. These clones want to replace you in this timeline and must kill you to make it happen. Each PC tracks their Paradox score differently. Every time a PC runs into one of their clones their Score increase by one. Once their score is equal to their Charisma, each additional encounter requires a save vs. Death to make sure the clone doesn’t sneakily replace you in the confusion.

If you fail, you die and get replaced. Play as the clone from now on. This stops other copies of you from appearing.

Friday, 20 March 2015

"I want to see a race of wrestler-monsters, learn what sort of fucked-up culture they have, and see a magic item of theirs."

________________________________________________

Gruntfolk

for Arnold K.

Introduction

Gruntfolk live in idyllic farming communities, where they keep to themselves and rarely venture far beyond their farmers' fields. Their settlements are readily identified by their peculiarly sparse architecture. Every building seems to have a ladder leading up to the roof. There are impact marks, if not craters, on the ground around every cottage. By mid-morning broken carpentry and masonry is strewn about the streets, to be swept up over lunch. The scent of sweat and coconut body oil lingers in the air like the smell of a pie on a gym windowsill. Most strangely, surrounding the town will be a series of posts, with ropes strung taut between them, referred to by gruntfolk as “the ring.” There are no gaps, doors, or entryways.

The impracticality of these rope fences as fortifications and as nuisances to the transit of carriages for trade exemplifies the subtle lack of subtlety of gruntfolk values. The reason for both of these lapses in judgement is simple: if the ring was any good at keeping enemies out there would be no reason for the gruntfolks' sentries to beat them up, and if the ring was accommodating for visitors and traders there would be no reason for gruntfolk to lift them up.

Lift as in literally lift up, and then throw into the ring. This is what gruntfolk do to friends and to those who they would like to be their friends. This part of is why gruntfolk are rare among mankind.

What They Are

A popular theory goes that the various humanoid races embody the dreams and sentiments of human beings. It's well known that faeries are the made of the dreams of children. On this theory, dwarves are made of human ambition. Elves, human vanity. Halflings, the human need for comfort and community. Our best guess for what composes the gruntfolk – perjoratively, the “grabby-halflings” – is a simpler and sadder need: attention.

Whenever a wizard casts Polymorph Self to fill out his speedos, a gruntfolk is born.

Gruntfolk most certainly descend from halflings. The traveller may distinguish the two races are at a glance by the gruntfolks' orange skin, platinum blonde moustaches and perpetual bug-eyed staring. However, the races share identically short stature and an in-born cleverness, low tolerance for boredom and playfully competitive community lives. Gruntfolk, however, have degenerated (or evolved) from lyre-loving, storytelling bucolic farmers to a race of impetuous, bellicose, rarely beshirted show-offs. Where a halfling is stout and hearty and eager to show up a neighbour with a subtle trick at the pub, gruntfolk are invariably JACKED – often disconcertingly so – and establish their status among their peers by throwing said peers against as many hard surfaces as possible, with as many witnesses as can be stuffed (or likewise thrown) into the room.

The Standings

If gruntfolks' appetite for cartoonish violence did not bar them from integrating into other cultures, the standings certainly would do just as well. Most gruntfolk are consumed by their place in them and by their ambition to climb them that they would never imagine leaving home. If they did, who would let everyone else know who they beat today?

Every gruntfolk ring is organized – surprisingly strictly – by the standings. Records of the standings are loosely kept, if written at all, but every gruntfolk in a particular ring knows their place in them. These are climbed by being the object of other gruntfolks' attention, most commonly obtained by pinning a fellow gruntfolk to the ground and forcing him or her to stare at you, exchange small talk or insults, or otherwise put up with you whether they like it or not. Of course, friendships, alliances, betrayals and counter-betrayals cause what would otherwise be a friendly spar or an orderly trial by combat into a neighbourhood-spanningbrawl. It is not unusual for individual gruntfolk to gain or lose standing several times a day, and then go home to choke-slam their in-laws after dinner. Grudges run exceptionally deep and exceptionally long, even between the best of gruntfolk friends, and rivalries are public knowledge

These fracas are elaborated and controlled by a series of taboos the gruntfolk have, meant to preserve a minimal degree of fair play, to stave off boredom and to sort out the chaos. Since it is often hard to keep track of who pinned who and for how long, gruntfolk generally deem combatants who give the most interesting displays of power to count to have pinned their adversaries. “Interesting” is most often determined by loudly shouted cheers and jeers, following the end of a bout, making gruntfolk society an ongoing exercise in pugilistic participatory democracy.

At the top of the standings is the titleholder, traditionally draped in an extravagant gold-plated belt and vested with title to all of the community's land and goods. The whole gruntfolk community exists for the titleholder's aggrandizement. A ring's titleholder may burst onto any scene, take people or property at will, and generally make a big show of themselves.

While in other cultures this level of power would lead to the pettiest of tyrranies, among gruntfolk it seems to work. The titleholder's power depends on its being used, and used publicly, and his or her numerous challenges spur projects of outrageous size, scope and expense. Many of these are quickly demolished, simply because the bored public cheers for it. However, it is not unusual for a gruntfolk settlement, goaded into action by a crafty titleholder and their own sense of competition, to accomplish dwarf-scale public works: gorge-spanning bridges that look like a bicep, whole rivers re-routed by hand, tunnels head-butted through mountains.

More normal measures of success still matter to gruntfolk. One may climb the standings through hard work, success in business, or having a sexy spouse or RIPPED heirs. However, these accomplishments are always affirmed in the community's eyes through theatrical displays of physical prowess. A gruntfolk blacksmith uses oversized and heavy tools, so that he can both be bigger and stronger and look bigger and stronger. A gruntfolk husband and wife have many children so the family can participate in bigger and more intricate tag-team fights. Whole industries revolve around both smashing and replacing chairs.

The entire surplus of a gruntfolk ring's economy is channelled into spectacle and excess, eclipsing and engulfing the possibility of either art or warfare. The gruntfolk have, in effect, blended and transcended the two. Gruntfolk philosophers believe their way of life to be divine in its meaningfulness and morality. They have written texts on the subject as thick as phone books, which they then rip in half to prove they are THE WORST NIGHTMARE of non-gruntfolk philosophers.

The standings are most commonly shaken up at an annual town hall type meeting. The titleholder will normally burst into the room, and describe at length peers he has beaten up, the many peers he plans to beat up in the future, as well as his or agricultural, industrial and financial accomplishments and how they have enabled him or her to beat more people up. This is met by similar bragging and threats from the rest of the community, which continue until all but the most and least likely candidates for leadership remain standing. The gruntfolk then throw the titleholder and these candidates into a large cage to continue the debate. While framed as an endless stream of taunts, jeers and outright threats, gruntfolk normally pierce the rhetoric and get to the issues at stake – namely, who among them is truly the strongest and most interesting to watch.

Relations With Other Races

While proud and egocentric, gruntfolk are both accepting of and interested in other races. They eagerly accept visitors, as it is difficult for outsiders to turn their eyes away from the daily acts of hyperbolic play-violence which, to gruntfolk, is very ordinary. Being the one to accept a visitor is also a point of pride for individual gruntfolk, and gruntfolk sentries will often fight each other for the right to throw a new acquaintance into the ring.

A non-gruntfolk thrown into the ring becomes an honorary gruntfolk and part of the standings. Upon regaining consciousness a newcomer's “manager” will introduce them to the community, arranging fights to help their new charge build a properly gruntfolk reputation. A newcomer – especially an unusual one – also improves the standing of their gruntfolk manager, since walking around town starting fights on behalf of some strange creature makes the manager an object of curiosity, that is, something to pay attention to. As a result, gruntfolk are especially motivated to throw passers-by with highly garish or stereotypical clothing into the ring. Magic users who dress like stereotypical magic users are especially susceptible to this sort of welcome.

Gruntfolk Characters and Monsters

Gruntfolk characters are halflings, with a few tweaks. If played seriously, you're probably playing them for less fun than they're worth. Their rules are a bit slippery, so rule in favour of letting gruntfolk do ridiculous things. Use the Swords and Wizardry White Box rules for halflings, with these changes:

Remove the deadly accuracy with missiles and near invisibility abilities.

Change the experience bonus for DEX into an experience bonus for STR. Alternatively, since a life of wrestling involves all sorts of athleticism, a gruntfolk might gain an experience bonus for having STR, DEX and CON above 11, or a combination of the two above 13.

Add the following abilities:

Wrestlemania: a gruntfolk's unarmed attacks do increased damage (1d4 damage, if your unarmed damage rolls are 1d2). Also, on a successful hit with an unarmed strike, a gruntfolk can automatically start grappling (instead of making the choice between attacking or grappling). Grappling should make some logical sense (gruntfolk probably can't grapple a dragon, though take a peek at the Oil of Flexing, below), but in the spirit of fun and of not breaking keyfabe the GM should allow grappling wherever it would be cool.

If you want a progression for what a gruntfolk can grapple, here's a table:

1st level: dwarves, other gruntfolk, children and pets, chairs.

2nd level: humans, elves, ladders.

3rd level: ogres, bears, construction girders.

4th level: a giant (perhaps by suplexing their ankle), a pretty good shed.

Targets of a grapple can't attack, unless and until they can break free, or if they are large enough that the gruntfolk is not grappling all of them at once.

Submission holds and body slams: while grappling, a gruntfolk can check (roll under) their STR to deal damage (1d4) to the target of their grapple, or end the grapple by body slamming the target against the floor or the wall or somebody else (doing 1d6 damage, possibly more).

Gruntfolk and their GM's are encouraged to reward creativity. The GM might allow the target saving throws against passing out (or against breaking limbs or backs), or might adjust morale rolls for the target or their allies in the face of such BRUTAL PUNISHMENT.

Awesome Accuracy with Stuff You Can Throw: gruntfolk dislike the subtlety of archery and only briefly appreciate the attention-grabbing potential of slings. They prefer throwing furniture, foodstuffs, their peers, and construction hardware. If there are normally penalties for using improvised throwing weapons, gruntfolk ignore them, otherwise they receive +2 to hit with these attacks. They can, of course, use the target of a successful grapple (see above) as suitable ammunition on a STR check.

Gruntfolk Announcers

Rarely, a gruntfolk is born with all the bombast and ego of his or her kin, but little of the attendant physical strength. Refusing to be beat down but unable to beat back, they find a place among their fellows by ingratiating themselves to stronger peers, regaling them with blow-by-blow commentary in a debased tradition of halfling epic poetry. With time and practice, these charismatic gruntfolk hold great sway in their societies, arranging fights between the ring's most prominent personalitiess and often conspiring to have their chosen combatants rise to prominence and dominance.

A gruntfolk announcer at the peak of their powers is not physically imposing (having maybe 2HD at most), but makes a dangerous leader. Gruntfolk treat suggestions from an announcer about who to fight (so long as there is enough buildup and fanfare) as Suggestions, and when doing so have +2 to hit and to damage.

Magic Item: Oil of Flexing

A wondrous concoction used by gruntfolk in their very public feats of strength. Anyone who slathers their naked body in the Oil of Flexing looks exceptionally RIPPED, and can perform incredible(-looking) feats of athletics. They can perform dozens and hundreds of pushups. They can backflip all over the place. They can jump off of things onto other things and look totally fine. None of these effects are really real, but they sure do look it. Oil of Flexing offers only the appearance of peak physical strength. When used solely on a single character, it offers bonuses to intimidation and, in the right company, seduction based on LOOKING MAD HARD.

What distinguishes the Oil of Flexing from mere glamer and illusion is how it affects multiple characters and objects, acting on one another. The Oil's various effects are ultimately unified by the Gruntfolk's love of spectacle, a need towards which the Oil always works its magic. Anything greased by the Oil bends to the task of making people look BUFF and BADASS.

Persons both slathered in Oil of Flexing are perfectly harmless to one another, dealing only non-lethal damage despite looking TOTALLY BRUTAL. They may engage in outrageous throws, jumps and very tight hugs that would be impossible, given their normal strength.

Physical objects coated in Oil of Flexing suffer seemingly opposite effects: they weaken insofar as a character covered in the Oil is acting on them: oily chairs shatter harmlessly against oily faces. Oily swords bend in the grip of meaty, oily hands. Oily copper pieces are as chewable as soft candy and literally shit out as brass tacks. You can grease up and jump off a cliff onto a similarly greased up plateau below and the only thing that will break is your ENEMIES' WILL TO OPPOSE YOU.

Oil of Flexing will soak a shirt clean through to the skin, and gruntfolk commonly apply the oil to themselves by soaking their shirts, which they then tear to shreds with ease. This is a common part of many of their coming-of-age ceremonies.

Any character who can brew potions can make Oil of Flexing. Various recipes exist. The Gruntfolk cookbook The Joy of Juicing recommends boiling a few gallons of fire giant sweat with a potion of strength (which distils down to enough Oil of Flexing for 1d4+1 applications). Any one application of the Oil of Flexing lasts for 1d6 hours before being sweated away.

It is exceptionally flammable. It burns like spark cannons and fireworks and makes dramatic curtains of smoke. Setting a wearer on fire will make them look very, very AWESOME for 1d6 rounds before the oil is used up. Paramedics should be standing by.

Improves reaction/morale rolls when interacting with people who respect audacious or grotesque physical strength (GM's discretion).

Characters covered the oil cannot be harmed by items (or surfaces) also covered in it. Characters may interact with these items as though they had STR 18, and these items fail any saving throws or other checks made to resist being destroyed by characters covered in oil.

Thursday, 19 March 2015

I have dreamed of a more organized way to do all this and it will become so at some point. There will be a way to browse completed requests so that they can be fulfilled anew. In the meantime, here's the list of new and unfulfilled requests:

Mathew Adams makes a sacraƒice oƒ himselƒ, to himselƒ:
"This is a randomly generated as you play dungeon thing, using the card game solitiara as the mechanic for the generating. I am busy with other stuff, so if other people wish to give it a crack and release it for free they are quite welcome to"

Quiet Alec went above and beyond the original 10 forms requested, giving us 20 ways to bore PCs to death along with arbitrary but non-negotiable fees. We can finally play DnD and Paranoia at the same time.

______________________________________________________

We've got a bureaucratic crisis, here, and the heroes are ready to go but the proper paperwork has not been filled out.

“You're missing... Hmmm... My system is booting up a little slow today; must be some heavy traffic! Heh. Sorry about the wait. Eh... okay. Fine. Fine. Check. Ahh! Here it is. You forgot to fill out the following form (roll 1d20)"

1.Statement of Proper Disbursement of Disowned Valuables, which provides a clear understanding of which party members are entitled to which found valuables. Fee of 2 gp.

2.Petition for Adventurer’s Immunity, which ensures you’re not held accountable for breaking strange laws of which you weren’t aware. Fee of 8 gp.

3.Application for Tax Exemption on Found Valuables, so you’re not taxed for anything you find during your adventure. Fee of 12 gp.

4.Application for Local Cleric Designation, to make sure your body is buried (or resurrected) according to your preferred beliefs.Fee of 31 gp.

5.Application for Posthumous Necromantic Protection, should you wish to retain your rights as a person and/or citizen if your body is transformed, through purpose or by accident, into a vampire, ghoul, zombie, etc. Fee of 13 gp.

6.Forfeiture of Progenitor Rights, should you, by accident or purpose, bring into being an entity that you believe you are unfit to care for. Fee of 17 gp.

7.Statement of Ethical Standards within the Current Party, for those pesky situations in which a dear companion is cursed or meddled with in such a way to alter their moral alignment and personality to an extent that you no longer wish to work with them. Fee of 6 gp.

8.Confirmation of Lighting Standards, assuring each member is properly equipped with materials to provide ample lighting in dark corridors.Refusal could mean difficulty in covering any physical harm that occurs as everyone will simple say, “You had it coming.”Fee of 28 gp.

9. Proposal for Disowned Property Annexation, in such a case that you find a large abandoned structure and you wish to renovate it into a domicile. Fee of 11 gp.

10.Warrant to Explore Discovered Properties, just in case that dungeon and treasure you find is actually owned by a dragon. You laugh, but these things are a legal nightmare. Fee of 23 gp.

11.Application for Modern Currency, since not all gold and silver found is up to the modern standards of bankers. Fee of 7 gp.

12.Pre-Emptive Apology for Accidental Maiming through Magical Artifact, because sometimes you guessed that wand had a healing spell and not a fireball spell. Fee of 2 gp.

13.Application for Alternative Explanation, which will be spread throughout town so that, should anyone ask about you, they begin their search in the wrong direction. Fee of 9 gp.

14.Application for Locksmith Compensation, to help reduce the costs should you find a locked chest without an appropriate key.Fee of 5 gp.

15.Application for Eldritch Caretaker, to provide those special needs required by those unfortunate souls whose body and mind are twisted by horrors beyond our comprehension. Fee of 27 gp.

16.School of Magic Accreditation, to prove that you received education in magic from only an accredited instructor. Fee of 10 gp.

17.Annual Statistical Report of Settlement Operations, required by all parties to help our leaders in their decisions for expansion.Fee of 14 gp.

18.Application for Formal Complaint Against a Party Member, because waiting to file the formal complaint itself can take for-ev-er!Fee of 4 gp.

19.Healing Services Provider Form, designating whom in the party is in charge of any medical decisions, should debate occur in transit. Fee of 16 gp.

20.Certification for Traveler’s License, a new program just developed to help keep vandals and wayward children off our country roads. Fee of 33 gp.

If the players refuse to fill out these forms, you should attempt to make any future dealings a bureaucratic nightmare. If possible, ensure that the refused event happens to the player who most refused. Fees may be negotiable depending on DM, but should provide XP similar to “Carousing tables.” Adjust fees based on how much money your party has available to spend.

Wednesday, 11 March 2015

New rule: Iƒ you are working on one, please tell me! There will be no public shaming, your calm little project will stay between you and me. I'd like to know iƒ/how many people are actually doing these things and iƒ I need to hype more.

Look on your challenges and weep not but dust:

1. The color of Noah Stevens' plumage indicates:

"we've got a bureaucratic crisis, here, and the heroes are ready to go but the proper paperwork has not been filled out.You're missing... Hmmm... My system is booting up a little slow today; must be some heavy traffic! Heh. sorry about the wait.eh... okay. Fine. Fine. check. ahh! Here it is. You forgot to fill out the following form( 1d10)"

2. Robin Zinc writes very well in his own blood:"a dungeon outline for the old, sealed-off temple of a forgotten Dwarf god. Monsters, traps, whatever, dungeon stuff. Back story unimportant unless amazing and necessary. My tastes lean towards the weird".

3. Arnold K. drips with sweat when he whispers:"a race of wrestler-monsters, learn what sort of fucked-up culture they have, and see a magic item of theirs".

4. Mathew Adams makes a sacraƒice oƒ himselƒ, to himselƒ:"This is a randomly generated as you play dungeon thing, using the card game solitiara as the mechanic for the generating. I am busy with other stuff, so if other people wish to give it a crack and release it for free they are quite welcome to"Click here to download the word document

Now comes the hard part. Go ƒorth and render onto chaos what belongs to chaos. Multiple conƒlicting incarnations oƒ the same idea pleases Tiamat so don't worry iƒ someone else is doing it too, it'll all be posted up.

Monday, 9 March 2015

Also known as Storm-children, the Children, or the Wardens; Storm-born are a peaceful race of hulking giants with deep spiritual devotions, and an insatiable curiosity about the small-folk of the wider world. They are found only in the cliff-side regions which border the Pale Straights, and derive their name from the near-ceaseless thunderstorms which wrack the area, and which the Storm-born revere as a spiritual singularity.

Basic Mechanics:

Storm-born have very high hit-points but are generally no more effective in offensive combat than a Wizard due to their unfamiliarity with violence. They gain abilities related to healing, divination and fast-travel as they level up, and gain clerical magic at about half the normal rate of a Cleric.

Abilities:
Sensory: Near-Perfect night vision and the ability to see monochromatically in the ultraviolet spectrum, but completely blind along the red/green spectrum.

Great-Size: Despite their great size, the innate gentleness of storm-born give them no benefits of strength beyond those of a typical adventurer; i.e. if you roll a 12 strength, you may actually have a strength of 22, but it doesn’t matter mechanically except…

Storm-born have encumbrance limits x3 what their strength would normally indicate.

Their nourishment requirements are also x3 higher than a human’s. They are untrained in the use of armor, and even acquiring armor to suit their frame would cost x10 the normal price.

Tough Hide: Stormborn have a natural AC adjustment of +2.

Lay on Hands: Beginning at 2nd level, Storm-born gain the ability to Lay on Hands to heal the wounds of a living creature. They may heal a total of hit points each day equal to 2x their level. Each time they use Lay on Hands, they may heal as many hit points as they desire.

Dimension Door 1/day: This ability is gained at 5th level, and functions exactly like the spell of the same name as a caster of the Stormborn’s level.

Commune 1/day: This ability is gained at 9th level, and functions exactly like the spell of the same name as a caster of the Stormborn’s level.

Spellcasting: Functions exactly like clerical spellcasting, but with fewer spells per day than a Cleric of their level, and access to fewer spells overall. Their spell list is a mix of Cleric and Druid spells.

Strongholds: Storm-born are too short-lived and busy to typically worry about building lasting structures. If a player really wants to get into domain play, model the Storm-born stronghold on the Cleric.

Class Tables:

Appearance:

At first glance the creatures are quite intimidating; they stand nearly 10’ at the shoulder, with a hunched posture that suggests an even larger potential, and their faces are bestial, in a stubbed equine fashion. Their alien eyes are great blue orbs, overlarge for their heads, and their skin is an inhuman shade of orange-brown, and thick as bull-hide.

However, on closer observation, their true character can be discerned; while initially unsettling, their wide-eyed stare belies a constant sense of wonder and curiosity. Their mouths are filled with flat and rounded teeth to accommodate their herbivorous diet. Their movements are slow and deliberate, they take careful steps to avoid damaging the small world around them.

Culture:

Violence is not abhorred among the children, it’s simply unknown. While sport and lively competition are an important part of their culture, particularly Aboch-yar, an odd mix of horseshoes, dodge-ball, and soccer; the idea of hurting someone else because of anger or for gain just doesn’t cross their minds. Guilt and shame are the primary deterrents in Storm-born society, and they have a complex system of shaming laws that would confuse a human visitor.

Their cultural behaviors are derived from their spiritual belief system, and the Storm-born are a very religious people. They believe that all of their people are soul-shards of a singular hive-mind called The Storm. Periodically The Storm decides that it wishes to learn more about the Prime Material and sends another Storm-born in, as a sort of reality scout. The deeds of any given storm-born, whether glorious or dishonorable, will eventually be brought back to The Storm to be shared among the entire singularity. Thus, the concept of bringing shame to one’s family has existential implications to a Storm-born.

The advisability behind punishing shameful actions with more shame, which must eventually be experienced by the entire race in unison, is best left debated by the High Storm-Wardens.

Storm-born cities are haphazard affairs. Storm-born believe this life to be but a short intermission in their eternal bodiless existence as part of The Storm, and thus build only the most basic creature comforts necessary to sustain them for their short lives. However, most do consider the process of building a living space to be a worthy experience to bring back to The Storm, and so their cities are jumbles and jumbles of stone and wooden lean-tos, half built into the Cliffs they call home, all built atop one-another, and only a handful of them occupied. Where they do take care to make a lasting impact is with the living things they grow for food or raise for company, and so their jumbled cities lie in stark contrast to their perfectly ordered orchards, symmetrical rows of crops, and beautifully maintained pastures.

Storm-born are birthed in an unknown fashion. Their people possess no defining sexual characteristics, and they gender themselves or don’t as suits their mood. They are born by simply washing up upon the shores of the Pale Cliffs, fully aware, and fully curious about the world around them. They live short lives of 10 to 15 years.

Boring self-indulgent explanations:

-I tried to follow Rules Cyclopedia format as closely as possible except I used ascending AC/Attack-Rolls.

-I don’t know nothin’ about Anime, but I got the idea for this race from this guy:

Unlike most cases, this race-class is not determined at character creation. The only way to become a fleshgod inheritor is to venture into a dungeon, museum, or royal vault, and find acanopic jar of the fleshgod.

These are 2' tall canopic jars that contain the organs from a fleshgod. These organs resemble their human counterparts only vaguely, and are about twice the size. The organs are immortal; inside their jars they spasm and spurt, exactly as they have been doing for the last century.

Fleshgods are star beasts of such exceptional puissance that they seem to be nearly impossible to kill. Once they fall to earth, they are too weak to climb out of their craters, and will merely lie there, wailing and bleeding, flopping around helplessly under our gravity. Eventually, they will be eaten by insects (the only creatures immune to the fleshgods' psychic blasts, as they lash out indiscriminately as they are being devoured over the course of years).

Only two fleshgods have ever fallen: Belpharukh and Gilahn. The fate of Belpharukh is well-known and outside the scope of this page.

Gilahn was revered as a god for almost a decade before the cult was massacred and their relics dispersed. Eventually the great god-corpse was cut up and used to feed the ghoul armies that marched on Yog.

Some of the relics that escaped the destruction were the canopic jars of the fleshgod, which contained its most potent organs. They are now scattered across the world, mostly in dungeons. When a PC finds a canopic jar and consumes the contents, they lose all XP and become a level 1 Fleshgod Inheritor.

Alternatively, a canopic jar can be sold for 1000s.

FLESHGOD INHERITORA new race-class who isn't keyed to a specific element or environment, who isn't patterned after a specific animal, and who isn't a construct.

Basically, take a human cleric and replace Turn Undead with Cosmic Cyst (below). Then replace all the spellcasting with Mighty Godflesh (below). Additionally, they can sense when a dungeon/building/hex contains an unopened canopic jar of the fleshgod.

One caveat: In order to level up as a fleshgod inheritor, a PC needs both the requisite amount of XP and to consume a new piece of fleshgod flesh from a canopic jar. When a Fleshgod Inheritor gains enough XP to approach the next level, the DM should insert a canopic jar somewhere into the current (or next) dungeon. Not at the end or the beginning, but somewhere in the middle. Roll 1d20 to pick a room if you have to.

Inheritors who spend time tracking down rumors and lost bits of lore should be able to learn the locations of specific types of organs, so that they can guide their evolution as they see fit. (See Mighty Godflesh, below.

One last caveat: when the Fleshgod Inheritor reaches 10th level, they begin doubling in size every day, instructed and fatted by extracosmic energies. Additionally, each day they must make a save or become an NPC, compelled to fly away into space in order to achieve their destiny.

Cosmic CystTear open a gateway to a cosmic cyst, a biomechanical chamber embedded in the substrate between the voids. (Physically, it resembles the inside of a garbage bag arranged in the shape of a derelict machine shop, through which a rain of H2O falls in slow motion.) Functionally, it works like the rope trick spell, giving beleagered parties a secret place to rest that is inaccessible to their enemies. After 8 hours of use, the cyst begins its digestion cycle, dissolving anything inside that doesn't exit immediately. The cosmic cyst is already in used by another fleshgod inheritor of HD 1d8+2 (50% chance) or 1d4+1 fleshgod inheritors of HD 1d6+1, who is either present when the party first enters or who arrives shortly thereafter. Once the rival inheritor is slain, the cyst is indisputably yours. If you invade their home and then flee, your rival fleshgod inheritors might chase you back into your dimension (but they often prefer to avoid our caustic atmosphere with all it's filthy nitrogen).

Everything in the previous paragraph is vaguely known to the nascent Fleshgod Inheritor. While they can access their cosmic cyst from level 1, most of them are smart enough to avoid entering it until they are confident they can overcome its guardian.

Mighty GodfleshThere are six types of canopic jars, each holding a different type of godflesh.

Heart

Lung

Liver

Brain

Stomach

Intestines

Each time you eat an organ of the fleshgod Gilahn, you either gain a new ability or upgrade an old one. These upgrades are non-stacking: once you learn Heart Ability #1, you lose access to Heart Ability #2.

Hearts ooze black ectoplasm for as long as the are whole. They are usually found in the bottom of chests that eternally leak what looks like engine oil. They taste like bitterness and old age; your saliva dissipates into grey smoke.

The first time you eat a fleshgod heart, your skin becomes covered with fleshy spines. You can no longer wear armor, but get protection as if from leather armor (but it is as light as no armor at all). Additionally, you can rattle your spines together, which causes humans and halflings within 100' to save vs fear or flee.

The second time, your skin becomes covered a shifting membrane that reflects a foreign starscape. You still can't wear armor, but it functions as chain armor (but it is as light as leather).

The third time, your rib cage swells, bursts, and hardens into a huge carapace. The shell hunches your back and arches over your head. You still can't wear armor, but it functions as plate armor (but it is as light as leather). Additionally, you have a 20% chance to reflect any spell cast on you, even helpful ones.

Lungsflutter out of their broken jars like sodden moths. A mad piping emerges from their curled tubules. They taste like hard vacuum, a pucker that travels down to your feet and makes your blood pool around coccyx.

The first time you eat a fleshgod lung, you gain two level 1 spell slots that you can each use 1/day. The first slot holds immanentize the eschaton and is immutable. The second slot is empty, but can be filled by a spell of your choice. To fill the slot, you must obtain a level 1 spell scroll, then cut open your belly button and stuff the scroll directly into your stomach. While you sleep, the sound of the ocean comes from your guts (as if you swallowed a speaker).

The second time is as above, except that you have two level 2 spell slots, the immutable one containing wave of extinction. While you sleep, the sound of a forest fire comes from your guts.

The third time is as above, except that you have two level 3 spell slots, the immutable one containing homeward disjunction. While you sleep, what sounds like whalesong comes from your guts.

Livers invariably outgrow their canopic jars. They feed on extradimensional poisons that drift through the ether. If a liver escapes its jar and is fed a steady diet of poison, it can grow large and feral, eventually becoming a Fleshgod Hepatoprax (see below). If eaten, it tastes like blood (only moreso) and causes your teeth to loosen in their sockets and the striations of your muscle to be visible beneath your skin.

The first time you eat a fleshgod liver, your primary hand turns into what looks like a black fractal antler. It shudders as it instantaneously grows, branches, and collapses. It deals 1d6 damage, as a sword. On a crit, it drains blood (if the target has blood) healing you for 1d6 HP. This also causes the whites of your eyes to turn red for several minutes until the blood clears.

The second time, your primary hand turns into a serrated claw. It deals 1d8 damage, as a heavy weapon. On a crit, it rips the armor off an armored opponent (if logically plausible) and hoarse cries of triumph in an alien language burst from a hidden throat someone in your guts.

The second time, your primary hand turns into a tentacle with an oddly bony tip. It is snapped like a whip, and is powerful enough to snap logs in half. It does 1d10 damage. On a crit, the target is disemboweled, and their intestines fall out of them like ground beef out of a styrofoam cup with the bottom cut off. (Vorpal, essentially.) Additionally, you are consumed with a powerful desire to eat a piece of each creature you kill, and must make a Cha save to resist this urge.

Brains are have the familiar sulci and gyri of human brains, but are shaped like traffic cones. Anyone looking directly at them has all the colors in their vision red-shifted. Brains taste fizz and pop while they dissolve on your tongue, and they taste like ozone and acid burns.

The first time you eat a fleshgod brain, you gain the ability to swallow opponents: make an attack roll against an adjacent opponent. If that opponent has 3d6 or less HP your jaw dislocates, distends, and you swallow them whole into the caustic oblivion that lines your soul. The target and all of it's possessions are usually unrecoverable. That night, you spend a couple minutes painfully vomiting out all of their bones. Each of their items has a 2-in-6 chance of also being ejected at this time; otherwise, it is lost forever.

The second time, you gain the ability to become a travelling tumor: You can enter a willing creature, existing as a tumor on their back. Mechanically, treat this as riding a mount, except that you are fused with them and weigh about 1/5 your regular weight. While so fused, you can still speak and use your hands, as normal. You and your host now share an HP pool, and you can redistribute HP as you see fit. This also allows you to move damage between willing targets, as the donor's lacerations seal with slurp and the recipient's chest suddenly blossoming with sucking chest wounds, like mushrooms after a rain. You can exit your 'mount' at will.

The third time, you gain the ability to lay paradox eggs: You lay an egg. As long as it is kept watered with blood (1 gallon a day) it will live. If the egg dies, anyone who gazes at the inchoate fetal paradox within must save or gain an insanity, and you will lay a new one in 1d12 months. If you die while the egg is alive, your inheritor will hatch from the egg immediately. The hatchling is you! It has all of your memories and skills (although its mind is now speckled with visions of the interplanar gulf and the creaking abysms of creation). So use your previous character sheet, with no XP loss or anything. (You were inside the egg. You were always inside the egg, even as you laid it. It is a paradox.) You have -4 to hit while you are still so small, but you grow to full size quickly, reducing this penalty by 1 per week as long as you eat a large amount of food daily (a small cow will do), potentially returning to full strength as quickly as a month.

Stomachsare rugose like a cross between brain coral and unstretched leather. Unlike their peers, they are slight and fearful organs, and will cower in the bottom of the canopic jar, mewling in terror, recoiling from your touch. They taste like rupture and transgression, a cross between a popping balloon and kissing your mom.

The first time you eat a fleshgod stomach, you get a freckled pot belly. Not an ugly pot belly, a cute one. Your other limbs narrow to aesthetic proportions. Freckles travel across the pot belly like emotive stars. Additionally, gravity is now reversed for you. (Hopefully you ate the stomach indoors.) If you want to walk on the same floor as everyone else, you can weigh yourself down with weights or a specially made suit of plate mail, but this is unwieldy and gives you -2 to hit. Additionally, you are immune to cold and vacuum, and can survive comfortably in the void of space until you comfortably starve to death.

The second time, your eyeballs drift out of your head and begin orbiting it like IOUN stones. Then another pair of eyes flies out of your sockets and joins the first, then another, and another. You can see in all directions as easily as you can see in one. However, you can only see through your 8 eyes as long as they remain in orbit around your head. You can climb on things, as if permanently under the effects of spider climb.

The third time, your belly button vanishes. Anything you say is now echoed by a basso voice located in the vicinity of your stomach. Additionally, you can use dimension door 1/day, but you can only travel to and from a place where many sharp angles intersect (such as the corner of a room).

Intestines loop in on themselves, building a mobius digestive track. Annular muscles push grey sludge through the loop in peristaltic waves, making a sound like a water heater full of mineral deposits. (You do not have to eat the grey sludge. If you do, save vs poison or suffer vomiting and weakness (-2 to hit) for rest of the day.) The stomach tastes like broken teeth and bruised molasses. You don't swallow it so much as allow it to slither down your throat.

The first time you eat fleshgod intestines, you gain an organ in your throat that gives you echolocation, allowing you visualize all solid surfaces within 30'. It is very noisy; it sounds like a vacuum cleaner trying to suck up a dead cow at a foghorn party.

The second time, your eyes sink into your skull, becoming inverted cones with a depth far greater than your skull would normally allow (non-Euclidean spaces) filled with a mist that shares your original eye color. This gives you X-Ray vision (stopped by foot of stone, inch of metal, mm of lead) for solid objects, but you can no longer discern colors (at least, not colors that your peers would understand) and so can no longer read books.

The third time, you midsection disappears entirely. Your upper body ends at your ribs, which now have skin, even on the bottom. Your lower body ends at the hips, which now have skin, even on the top. You cannot separate these halves any more than you could before--your torso still exists, merely in another dimension. Blood flows from your heart to your feet as normal; it just passes through another dimension to get there. Additionally, you gain the ability to travel back six seconds in time with full knowledge of what transpired (usable once per day). This ability is 90% reliable, but each time you use it, the chance of success drops by 10%. This chance is only increased by eating the viscera of a sentient creature (which increases the chance of success by 1% per HD). If this roll is failed, not only do you fail to travel back in time, but a paradox clone of yourself is created somewhere in the world that has all of your knowledge and abilities (but not equipment) and will work tirelessly to thwart all of your goals.

New SpellsImmanentize the EschatonLevel 1 Wizard SpellThe sky turns an unnatural color, crows fly backwards, or slain animals laugh in your nets. This spell hastens the apocalypse by 1 day, and there are entire cults dedicated to its casting. Additionally, it has a useful side effect: for 1 hour, all clerical and divine magic cast within 50' (of this spell's point of origin) is weakened, and all creatures get a +2 bonus to save vs divine magic.

Chain of ExtinctionLevel 2 Wizard SpellIf the target fails a save, it takes 3d6 extinction damage, and this spell immediately jumps to the next nearest target of the same species as the last target. Creatures killed by this spell immediately decay into gravedirt and fused fossils.

Homeward DisjunctionLevel 3 Wizard SpellTarget takes 1d6 damage for every 100 miles it is from home. Save for half. If they fail the first save, they must make a second save, or be returned to the location of their birth.

New MonstersFleshgod HepatopraxHD 6AC has leatherMovement as humanBludgeoning tubules 1d6/1d6 + hemorrhageSpecial: Gallstone 1/day. Explodes in a 20' radius on contact (similar to fireball) that cuts target's current HP in half. Save for half (so drops current HP to 75%).Special: If both tubules hit the same target, they begin hemorrhaging, filling their eyes with blood (blinded) and dealing 1d6 damage per turn. Lasts 1d6 rounds or until they receive healing (magical or otherwise).

They look like bear-sized livers that slide around on a trail of their own blood. Although they have four limbs (and are capable of walking) they prefer to slide on their "bellies" and use their four radial limbs to shove themselves around.